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BOINC In General

BOINC recommends to always run the latest public release of the BOINC Core Client (CC) for your platform. This will often support the majority if not all projects. Having said that, sometimes some projects (usually new ones) will need the new features of a new version of the client - and that client may not be fully compatible with all projects. So it is best to check what version you need for the projects you decide on a particular system before installing the latest and greatest.

As part of BOINC framework, projects can require that the CC be part of a certain minimum version - so from time to time (fairly infrequently) it will become mandatory to upgrade your CC before more work can be downloaded. If the CC is not upgraded, then it will complete processing on existing WU's and then run out of work. The "Messages" tab on the CC will display messages similar to "your core client is out of date, please upgrade to version Vxyz".

Project Application Download

It is not necessary to download the project applications. The BOINC CC will communicate with the project website the version each computer has installed (if any) and will download the required version if it is not available. From time to time, the project will issue a new version of their applications and will then force the CC to download the required new versions when they next receive new WU's. This has caused some consternation with the larger users about having a program download other programs from a potentially unsecure/untrusted source. The rule here is that if you're not happy with the concept in general or a project in particular then don't use that project or BOINC.

A means to bypass this is to download the source code of both this CC and the project application (if they are available - not all are) and compile them for yourself. The BOINC CC application for each platform identifies itself as being for that platform - e.g. the windows BOINC CC has "windows" as its identifier - and will only run project applications which also have this "windows" identifier. Using this and changing the identifier in the BOINC CC to "AA" for example will only permit project applications called "AA" as well. More about this will be documented later for adventurous explorers.